Life is going well here in Gleno. Those things that seemed alien when I arrived in Timor-Leste are starting to become more normal 😀. This is a short post showing one of our CED (Community Economic Development) training activities.
We had the pleasure of visiting a bunch of young people (Joven) at one of the local Suku buildings. Each Municipality is split into separate areas, known as Suku’s, which provide a local administration and government role. 5 Of us Volunteers (Andrew, Richard, Jocyln, Kelly and I) visited the Lauala Suku last Friday and met up with 12 young people (12 thru 26 years old with average age 17 years old). We did an exercise with them where they created a storyboard which identified their “Dream Job” (Mehi Serbisu), their Current Skills (Actual Skil) and the skills they would need to acquire (Presiza Skil) to “bridge” to that Dream Job. Below I show the poster I created (for my dream job… teaching Engineering in a beautiful country) as part of our Group to help guide the students plus some other photos from our visit. It was a great exercise and went really well. Even though our Tetun is not great (yet) I think we were able to get the message across and we got full participation from the students. Afterwards we asked each student to present their poster. I was “welling up” with how well they did 😥. Timor-Leste has many many such enthusiastic young people who have dreams for their future.
I have also been managing to keep up with my exercise and running here in Gleno. I normally run early in the morning and normally there are a lot of young people also out running. I think that some of the Martial Art groups and youth groups promote health and fitness here. Its a good thing and something I hope I can help promote during my time here. Below is a photo of the river at the bottom end of Gleno. Does not look much like a river now, but as the rainy season is nearly here, this will soon become a torrent of water.
Until my next post, stay safe and well 😁!!
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